Thanksgiving Fun!

We had a great week off from 'regular' school! One of the highlights of the week was making 'Thanksgiving Blessing Mix' for the neighbors.

First we decorated bags....
Laid out the goodies to put in the bags....

Starting stuffin'....

Then we attached a message that told what each goodie represented...

They had fun delivering them =)

The older girls did a small workbook I printed off from Enchanted Learning...

The younger 2 did a simpler book from the same site...

Little guy had a good time perfecting his Leapster skillz...

He's a stylin' boy, that one...

Thanksgiving video

Here is a youtube video of my kiddos and what they are thankful for... HERE
ENJOY! **edit to say: that may not work...here it is all typed out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVE6X7r1g58 I hope that works!!

ECC week 19 Kenya (Africa)

First off, here's a picture of our first snow of the season. This was Friday night, Nov 12. Started around 7pm and snowed off and on thru the night. Melted all the next day though and we havent had any of the white stuff since! I am hoping for a mild winter (as far as the snow is concerned) so that I can still get my outdoor running in!
Here are our book basket books for week 19....

Playing mancala w/ my 5yr old. She was the only one that just about beat me!

Some map work....

Grassland mural...

Impromtu Grasslands book that my 10yr old made. There were about 6 pages, each w/ a different animals/nature picture and a fact about it.

Non school related, but this little cutie got a hair cut courtesy of daddy this weekend....

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I MISS MY BABY!!!!!

Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Party!

'Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows...' James 1:27

This is our 2nd year to participate in Operation Christmas Child. We are so blessed by this oppurtunity.
Last year, I shopped for the box and the girls just put the items in.
This year, I not only took them with me but they each contributed $5 of their OWN money to buy stuff for an unknown 5-9 yr old girl somewhere in the world.
They also paid the shipping cost and were THRILLED with the fact that this box was COMPLETELY from them.

This year, the homeschool group we belong to put on a 'Shoebox party'. We all gathered at a church, brought our shoeboxes, and food to share from a different place and any artifacts, jewelry, pictures or money to share from a different country.

In this picture we are getting ready to pray over the shoeboxes. We watched an Operation Christmas child video and it took all my strength to not end up a blubbery mess at the end!

Oh those sweet children!!

Here's all the kiddos (minus a few little ones) w/ the shoeboxes...

The gal who spearheaded this did SUCH a good job. There were 2 tables for each continent. One table held artifacts/pictures etc from that continent and the other had an activity to do. The kids were also given a map of the world. Once they had completed an activity, they would put a star on that continent....

Here they are doing origami animals for Asia...

Face painting from Africa....

Oreo penguins for Antarctica....

Kangaroo sack races for Australia...

Igloo building for North America...

'Dutch pins' (bowling basically) for Europe...

(There was also 'futbol' for South America, but I somehow didnt get a pic of that)

That whole counter was full of food from different places....

YUMMY!!!!

I cant wait til my girls are a little older and we can volunteer at the distribution center. I have always had a BIG heart for giving and helping the less fortunate and I cant wait to share that passion w/ my girls =)

ECC Week 18 Kenya (Africa)

Jambo!
We have just completed our first week in Africa (Kenya) which means we have also completed the first HALF of ECC! We have reached the pinnacle and now we are cruising down the other side of the mountain to the finish. And loving every minute!

Here are some pictures from our first week. I apologize that I didnt take any book basket pictures. We had a lot of good ones this week!

John 3:16 page...
Labeling different countries in Africa...

Color labeling different grassland areas around the world (I didnt know different grasslands were called different things depending on where in the world they are found!)

Grasslands worksheet...

We have used this book for some read aloud time-very informative!

We have LOVED reading David Livingstone, and as with George Muller, we are already a few chapters ahead. I see my library has more books from the 'Christian Heroes: Then and Now' series so we may be checking more of them out in the future!

Here is a cute picture Ariel took. Savannah was having 'school' one night this past week and would write something on the white board for the 5 and 7yr olds to copy (this was the 5yr olds picture) and then they had to illustrate it. Too cute.

Had to share this one too. My 7yr old who is just about the smiling-est, skippy-est, most jolly-est child you will probably ever meet is in LOVE with her stuffed animals. Many times a day she'll go skipping down the hallway and we hear 'I'm going to take care of my stuffed animals now, they need me!' and she will proceed to arrange them on her bed, or 'groom' them, or talk to and hug them. She is such a sweetie. The girls have their own camera that they share and she took this and about 48 other pictures of her 'stuffies' (and thats probably NOT an exaggeration)

(and yes that bottom right animal is a Gizmo from the movie Gremlins and NO my children have not watched the movie. She saw it at Toys R Us one time and INSTANTLY fell in love. So she got it for her birthday in October and she carries it E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E.)

And a non-school note, we got our first snow of the season last night here in Husker country. Normally I LOVE stormy, snowy, inclement weather, the more inclement, the better. But now that I am a runner (don't laugh), I LOATHE hearing there will be snow on the ground. I had to skip my long run today due to the snow. I PROBABLY could have done it, but I got a really junky night sleep last night (up from midnight to 5 a.m.!!) so I think that was the Lord's way of telling me that I wasn't suppose to run today. I am hoping that it will be fine tomorrow as most of the sidewalks have melted today.

HOWEVER.

Its suppose to be really cold overnight, so I am hoping that the sidewalks wont be solid sheets of ice tomorrow. I'm not equipped with the oh-so-cool YakTraks or screws shoes with which to tackle such an environment.

I GUESS I could pick up ice skating and call it a day...

=)

ECC Week 17 week 2 GERMANY (Europe

I still cant believe how wonderful My Father's World is. We have loved it every step of the way so far. I cant believe that my older 3 girls have memorized most all the countries of North America, South America, and Europe. Ok, ok, *I* have memorized them too. =)
Here was our book basket books for week 2 in Germany. We really enjoyed reading the top book 'A Family from Germany'
For science, we learned alot about rivers and lakes. And in the Living World Encyclopedia, we learned about Pond Skaters and how they are so light, they can walk on top of the water without sinking. We illustrated this w/ a paper clip and water. I cant explain why it worked, but it was pretty cool.
We tried to do what the teacher's manual asked us to-partly open a paper clip into an 'L' shape and use that to place a 2nd paper clip in the water and the 2nd paper clip should float.
Didn't work.
So I went to the trusty My Father's World forums and found another method.
We cut a small square of toilet paper-twice as long and wide as the paper clip. We placed the paper clip in the center of the square and carefully laid it in our bowl of water. Slowly, the toilet paper sank to the bottom but the paper clip stayed on top of the water. The girls thought it was super cool.

We learned a little about castles this week and watched a few YouTube videos showcasing some TRULY gorgeous castles in Germany. Then we got to draw some...

It was a sad time when we said goodbye to George Muller this week. What a testimony that man leaves behind. It is amazing to think about how many lives he has touched and how many lives that God has allowed to be spared thru the work of this faithful, generous man.

We have decided to skip the vocabulary cards as my girls DREADED doing them. Now we just flip thru the book, I cover the definition and tell them the name and show them the picture-then they have to tell me the definition. Has been working well. We also use Fridays to go thru our memory verses.

The weather here has been BEAUTIFUL these past few weeks. Hard to believe late fall in Nebraska can be this nice! I am hoping it sticks around for awhile. I dont know how I will fare trying to run in the snow!

Maybe its time to look into snowshoes....